


Chosen For What?

by ExtollerofTrolls (Fullmetalpon3)



Category: Don't Starve (Video Game), Invader Zim
Genre: 2 years ago, Bad Ending, Gen, I started writing this, I won't do to you what mass effect did to me, Like, No Beta, SO, at least you know, gaz is only in a little bit, lots of vague crud, screw physics, spoilers but if you want to get invested only to get smacked in the face with abruptness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:54:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29768235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fullmetalpon3/pseuds/ExtollerofTrolls
Summary: Dib finds evidence of powerful magic in a tiny out of the way town in New England. Zim finds evidence that the humans were hiding greater technology then he thought. And cosmic forces find easily manipulated pawns.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	1. Loss of the Ordinary

Sometimes, an event that seems big or important at the time, is only a prelude to an even bigger event.

A good example of this is with volcanoes. Before Vesuvius erupted in all her scarlet fury, there was an earthquake. Some people noticed this and left the city, taking their meager supplies and hoping that they were wrong about their fears. Of course, those who didn’t take heed soon found out those were mere hiccups compared to what she had planned.

A tsunami is another such example. Like a volcano, they are also often preceded by earthquakes, usually quite a while before they start. To be fair, these earthquakes generally do start quite far away from where these monsters hit the shore and are possibly quite as devastating as the wave itself is.

This story, however, is about an event that was triggered by a very poor, very desperate mistake, long before any “aftereffects” began. The mistake of a miserable man longing to be noticed.

And sadly, had the man who had made this error would eventually find out, it would have been better to have stayed a miserable man longing to be noticed… then to doom a miserable child longing to be noticed to the same fate.

…

In the 13,894, 404,236th earth year since the beginning of the universe two unimportant creatures were sitting at their stations in a dark room full of monitors, desperately trying to avoid falling asleep. You couldn’t honestly blame them; they were overworked doing a job that had very little interaction, and they would be gone long before they would have a chance to find out the true importance of this task.

The one being sighed and lazily glanced over the monitors. She drummed her gloved fingers lightly on her desk in the rhythm of a catchy pop tune, then stopped. She tapped the shoulder of her co-worker and whispered, “Bev, don’t doze off; the supervisors will kill you if they catch you.”

Bev snorted and sat up. “I’ll probably die of boredom first, Rin.”

“Don’t be so sarcastic,” Rin chided, though she internally agreed with her companion. She traced one of her three fingers up and down a zigzagging path on a graph, imagining a beat dropping for every time the path dipped down. Would make a pretty cool song.

Wait, why was the path spiking up so suddenly? For a second, her finger followed it, without her thinking about it, but the spike was immediate and intense, and she quickly realized something was wrong. “Bev!” she hissed, taking her hand off. “Look at this!”

Bev stood up from his chair and looked over her shoulder. His antenna shot up in alarm. “What is that?!” He grabbed his tablet and hurriedly looked through the descriptions of different energy readings. “There’s nothing here!”

Rin’s fingers raced over the touch screen, typing in commands as fast as she could, in order to locate this energy source. “Wait… It’s gone?”

“Try to track any residual energy,” Bev told her, without looking at the monitor. “I’ve never seen an energy spike of that magnitude...”

“No, it’s not fading, it’s outright gone!” Rin snapped. “Look!” She gestured to the monitor and the vertical drop in the path. “It just disappeared.”

Bev trembled a bit. “But… even supernovas devolving into black holes don’t have an immediate energy withdrawal...”

“I don’t think was a black hole...” Rin continued to type commands, and replayed the readings on the main computer. “The amplitude and amount of energy were about right, but it was way too precise and concentrated.”

Bev stared up at the monitor, and he felt his antenna go slack. “H-hey… Rin… you don’t think that it was… controlled, do you?”

She turned slowly. “What do you mean?” she asked, knowing very well what he meant.

“That… something- or someone-… did that on purpose. Like, really advanced technology-”

Rin leapt across the room and shoved her hand over his mouth. “Shhh!” She cast a look around the room, then whispered next to his antenna. “We’ll talk about this later. For now, just keep your bright ideas to yourself!”

Bev was surprised by her forcefulness but gave a wary nod.

“Don’t tell anyone about this, got it?” Rin commanded. “We just wait til the end of our shift and pretend nothing ever happened. I’ll get in touch with the superiors, so you just keep your mouth shut.”

Bev did as he was told and despite slightly more anxiety than normal, the event drifted further back in his mind. Three days later, however, he was eating his meager lunch, when he was approached by two guards.

“Irken Bev, you are in Intelligence Collection branch, specifically Pulse Energy Monitoring sub branch, correct?” the one on the right asked.

“Um, yes, Irken Bev reporting!” He stood up so hurriedly, he knocked his lunch to the ground. He gave the guards a sheepish grin, which they did not acknowledge.

“We have orders to bring you to the higher ups,” the guard on the left stated. “Please come peacefully, or we will have to use force.”

For a brief moment, Bev considered bolting. However, there was only so far you could get when you were on a space station, so he nodded and followed them down the hall.

“W-what am I being called for?” Bev asked.

“We were not informed,” the first guard said, without even a backward glance.

“Oh… okay,” Bev returned in a small voice.

After walking through about four flights, they finally reached an elevator. Bev gasped slightly when he saw it, as this was an elevator that was restricted to all but the most elite of Irkens. The guards had their PAKs scanned, and the elevator door opened.

“Go in,” one commanded and pushed him.

Bev stumbled a bit, and gaped. “Y-you’re not coming with me?”

“We were prohibited from coming,” the other one explained. “Oh, and don’t try to run; you’ll definitely get yourself killed.”

Bev began to tremble, but he couldn’t leave; the elevator door had already closed in his face.

He waited for about ten seconds, when it reopened in a large, dark room with a circular platform in the center. A circle of lights pulsed in one corner of the room, and a sea of cables ran across the ceiling. He meekly stepped out, the door closing immediately behind him.

“H-hello?” he called out.

“Greetings,” said a feminine voice. Though the voice was not hostile, Bev almost went limp when he heard it.

It was the voice of Tallest Miyuki. And sure enough, she emerged from the darkness behind the platform.

“M-m-my Tallest!” he exclaimed, immediately saluting by waving his antenna.

“No need for formalities,” she told him, briskly. “Your task is very simple, and we can begin once your coworker arrives.”

“My coworker?”

The elevator door opened up behind him, and he turned to see a bewildered Rin.

“My Tallest,” Rin stated, less visibly nervous than Bev, but with a slight tremor in her throat. “What do you require us for?”

Tallest Miyuki hovered over to the window, staring out at the distant stars. “I simply need you to answer some questions. As long as you are not lying, there is no punishment for the way in which you answer.”

The two Irkens nodded.

“You two have a shift for energy pulse monitoring, correct?”

“Affirmative,” they responded in unison.

“Elaborate on the importance of your job.”

Bev remembered the definition from the manual. “’Pulse Monitoring allows Irken Intelligence to gauge distance in space, as well as determine which parts of the universe are unfit or unsafe to conquer, due to black holes or quasars.”

“Correct.” Miyuki turned. “However, if that was the only happenings in that department, I would not have called you here. I have been notified about a particularly odd reading you oversaw the other day. However, this notification was not reported by either of you. Is that correct?”

Rin gave a sideways glance to Bev. “I apologize, my Tallest. I… was attempting to interpret the readings on my own. I should have notified my superiors immediately.”

Miyuki stared down at them. “You have told no one of these readings?”

“No, my Tallest,” Rin said.

“You either, Bev?”

“N-no, my Tallest!” Bev squeaked, wondering how she knew his name.

She closed her eyes and smiled. “Excellent.”

The two smaller Irkens stared at each other. She was pleased that they had basically disobeyed the orders of their superiors?

“I suppose you are wondering how I know that this occurred,” she stated, eyes narrowing. “Your superiors, if they can even be called that, are very neglectful in their work. They are supposed to be reviewing your collections, but they do not. However, thankfully, someone else does.”

The room lit up, and Bev could see clearly that the wires connected the pulsing lights in the corner. And those lights were part of a large sphere.

“You have been told your whole pathetic lives that the highest placement in the Irken society is that of Tallest. This is a lie; the Tallest are mere figureheads. We simply carry out the commands of a much greater power. The Control Brains.”

The sphere’s lights lit up, and focused, almost as if they were several eyes. Miyuki continued. “They can process information much faster than we can, but let’s see if we can try to keep up with her, just a little.”

Bev and Rin instinctively took a step closer together. The two were very afraid, and any small amount of comfort they could muster was a gift.

“Our current power source has about the energy output of a white dwarf star. This is a greater power than the Resistee or any other known alien race has,” Miyuki told them, stepping closer. “However, this… this is a power with an output greater than a quasar. And if the Resistee find out about it, they will immediately attempt to recruit this planet to fight us off. They may succeed.”

“We swear we will never mention this to anyone, My Tallest!” Rin cried out, her voice almost breaking.

The leader stared down at them, with pure apathy. “We will make sure of that.”

The cables on the ceiling came to life and grabbed the poor Irkens before they had a chance to react.

…

“A shame,” Miyuki noted, picking up a shard of one of the Irkens’ PAKs that lay scattered across the floor. It was impossible to tell what pieces had belonged together in the first place.

“A necessary precaution,” the control brain stated, obviously unmoved. “PAKs can be read and soldiers can be interrogated.”

“Well, you wouldn’t understand anyway,” Miyuki sighed, knowing that the control brain would consider this statement stupidity and ignore it.

“Continuing to the matter at hand, we cannot allow a planet with such advanced technology to thrive. We must invade it, but we cannot allow anyone, not even the invader to know why they are there.”

“I see. Perhaps we should label it an exploration mission?” Miyuki asked.

“This seems fitting. We will simply expand the maps to reach this region of space, and we can eventually send an Invader there. But it will have to be a very capable one, and one of us will have to decide who to send. The fate of our empire could rest on them.”

This Control brain considered the other Irkens to be very incompetent. But perhaps it was the incompetent one, as it did not bother to monitor the one Irken who had single-handedly caused more trouble than any other Irken in history. This Irken who eventually found this planet, even if it was unintentional.

…  
How ironic was it that a man who had never felt he would receive any recognition for his actions ended up receiving attention from the most powerful empire across the universe?

That his invention ended up triggering a series of events that eventually would accidentally lead an Irken soldier to his planet?

Not that this man was around long enough to really find out about this.

Before this man alerted the Irken Empire of his presence, there was already far more powerful and malicious group of beings who had noticed him.

And as terrible as the rest of the universe considered the Irkens to be, they were absolutely nothing compared to these monsters who had already found this man.

Poor Wilson P. Higgsbury was already fighting for his life, and his sanity, and was as vulnerable as he could possibly be.


	2. A Clash of Wills

Dib Membrane was not well-liked. He had never remembered ever having a single friend in school, and had simply had his head shoved down toilets or his lunch crushed by bullies.

Then, a year ago, a strange being appeared in his grade spontaneously. He was an alien who was bent on overtaking their planet. Sort of.

Though Dib fought constantly in life or death battles with this newcomer, he was the closest thing he had to a friend. An enemy.

Since he now had his belief in the supernatural reaffirmed, he had begun to explore other unique anomalies.

Which had led him to the discovery of spelldrives. At first, he had simply thought that the spelldrives were simply meant for researching and casting spells. This had led him into an enormous problem, but that’s a different story.

He later found out, while on a field trip out of state, they also had the unique ability to detect areas of high magic and supernatural happenings. It was basically “magic wifi signals” (Though perhaps magic wasn’t the right word. Anomaly, maybe?). Considering that the spelldrives were from the middle ages, the creator had been very ahead of his time.

Most of the spelldrives were busted or dormant, but a few could still boot up (if you repeatedly slammed the keyboard), and they could very keenly pick up the signals, even if they were halfway across the world. Every so often, one spot of magic would disappear, or another would reappear, but some remained fixed in their location.

Some areas Dib had predicted would hold large amounts of magic, such as Area 51 of Nevada, Cavanas in Puerto Rico, and Rome. Dib was not entirely sure what was living there, but he imagined it could be a number of things, from dormant hydras, to gargoyles guarding churches.

Other locations baffled him. Some of these were Long Island and most of Manhattan, mountains in Germany, and a small assortment of locations from all over the other parts of the United States, mostly in Pennsylvania, Oregon, and Texas. Sometime he would need to pay a visit to each of those places. However, none of the locations housed a level of magic that was much higher than the levels in his own town, so they weren’t a priority at the moment. Nevertheless, he made sure to keep a map of all the locations.

When he came home from school one day, he found a hotspot, several hundred miles away from him, but closer than many of the others. It was extremely small, and not very powerful, though, so he simply added a new dot to the map and went on with his day.

Later that night however, he heard a low, but constant tone coming from upstairs. At first, he merely assumed it was Gaz playing a new game, so he continued making his peanut butter and pickle sandwich and ignored it.

When Gaz came down and threatened to shove a pickle through his eye socket because he didn’t turn off his “stupid computers”, he decided to check it out. He was sure he had turned off his computer.

Gaz had been right about the noise, but it had not been generated by his computer, but one of the spelldrives. He dropped everything and ran to it, almost giddy with excitement. He had never heard the spelldrives ever make any noise.

Wiping his hands off on his coat, he rushed to analyze what could be the cause. To his immense surprise, he found that the hotspot closest to him had nearly tripled in the level of power it contained, and was continuously growing.

“Oh my gosh!” Dib’s mind raced with the possibilities of what it could be. A group of aliens? Zombies rising from the grave? Cthulu finally awakening from the Outer Realms? He needed to get there.

“I thought I told you to shut that stupid thing off!” his sister screamed from downstairs. Dib quickly wrapped a thick blanket around it to muffle the sound.

“Gaz, thanks so much for telling me about this!” Dib exclaimed, rushing down the stairs so fast he nearly tripped over the banister. “We need to get here as fast as we can!”

“’We’?” Gaz asked.

Either Dib was ignoring her or he just hadn’t heard. “Oh, but Dad would never agree to take us...” His eyes fell on a newspaper resting on the table. “Wait a sec!” Dib rushed upstairs to his room, hurriedly searching for something online. “This might work!”

He ran downstairs again as his sister went up. While he passed her, she stuck her leg out and he tripped down the rest of the way. Unfortunately for her, it didn’t seem to affect him.

“We can get Dad to take us! There’s gonna be a full solar eclipse there tomorrow! We’ll just tell him that’s the best vantage point,” Dib shouted.

His only response was the slam of a door, but he just assumed his sister was trying to get some rest for tomorrow. Good. They were going to need it.

…

Getting their father’s permission to travel to the hotspot had been so easy Dib wanted to cry. It was like the mere mention of the word science set his dad into “fatherly education mode”, and he allowed them to take a day off from school and looked over the bus schedule for them.

Dib still remembered his father’s words about studying how animals and plants reacted to the sudden lack of light, yada yada. And to take care of his sister.

Yeah, Gaz did not appreciate that too much. But she did agree to come along, packing plenty of batteries and game cartridges along for the bus ride. She just didn’t want to go to school, and Dib had offered her chips and snack cakes in exchange.

“I wonder if this place is a graveyard… Are zombies gonna rise up?! Or maybe there’s ghosts! Oh man, I’ve never seen readings like this!” Dib flipped open the spelldrive again. It was a good thing that there were no other passengers on the bus ride, or they probably would have been extremely irritated by the tones which projected from it and were growing ever louder and steadier.

Unfortunately, Dib had not been paying much attention and suddenly found himself on the ground, due to the bus stopping suddenly and pitching him forward. “Hey!” he exclaimed, before the bus driver held up his hand.

“That’s what you get for not sitting properly,” he chided, rolling his eyes. “Anyway, this is your stop.”

Dib peered out the window, hoping to see a ruined mansion, or a dark graveyard, or anything other than what he was seeing, really. Because all he saw was a small, but perfectly normal town. In fact, it looked even more normal than their town.

“Wha… this can’t be right!” He flipped the spelldrive back open, but sure enough, they were nearly right on top of the anomaly hotspot.

“Sorry, kid, but this is the exact stop you wanted to go to. Bus comes back at 5:30. Either stay on or get off.” He gestured to the open doors.

Dib sighed. Well, this was disappointing, but there must be something here. Maybe it was buried. “Thanks. C’mon, Gaz.”

Gaz got up from her seat, not taking her eyes off her device, and followed Dib out. The bus closed its doors and left. Dib stared at the dust trail that followed it.

“Let’s ask around,” Dib told his sister. “Maybe someone here can help us.”

“Only if you have more snacks,” Gaz told him. He handed her one of those snackcake packets that tasted like chemicals. She reluctantly followed behind her brother as he walked through the town. It was quiet. The loudest thing they passed a few toddlers drawing with chalk on the sidewalk, under the watchful eye of their mother, who was hanging up laundry on a clothesline.

Dib debated if this place could even be called a town. More like a village. He stopped in front of a bronze statue. The plaque in front of it informed him that it had been around since the beginning of the twentieth century. Not very useful.

“I guess everyone’s at school or work,” Dib sighed. It was much different than the loud and foul-smelling city he was used to. It made him uncomfortable.

“Well, can we get something to eat then?” Gaz pointed at a small cafe. “I’m tired of standing.”

Dib conceded and followed his sister in. The only people inside were the clerk and an old man reading a newspaper. While Gaz looked at the sweets in a glass case (they did look much nicer than the food in their city, Dib did admit), Dib looked around for any brochures or pamphlets to see about attractions in the town.

“Looking for something to do?” asked the clerk when she saw him. He told her how he had come here monster hunting. He scowled a bit when he saw her suppressing a grin.

“Monster hunting, huh? I’ve never seen any monsters around here.”

“How about ghost? Or graveyards?” Dib questioned.

“No ghost infested graveyards, sorry.” She must have seen the disappointment on Dib’s face. “There aren’t any graveyards, but there is the Higgsbury Hovel. It’s a real dump. Crazy scientist used to live there, apparently. He was working on a whole bunch of weird experiments, and just disappeared one day. No one ever found his remains. Oooo~” She wiggled her fingers as though imitating a ghost.

“Really? What’s the house like? Do you think he was murdered? Or died during an experiment?” Dib asked.

“Geez, you sure are excited about some dude dying,” she chided. “And I don’t know. My friends and I went out to spraypaint it one night,” she recalled. “I totally thought something was watching us the whole time. Could have just been nerves, though.”

She got the snacks Gaz requested out of the case and continued, “People say you can hear whispers if you go out there at a new moon, but I’ve never heard any. Anyway, if you want to look for monsters,” Dib ignored her tone, “that’s the place I’d start around here.”

“Cool,” Dib thanked her. “That’s where I’m headed, then.”

He and Gaz headed for the door.

“Wait, I didn’t tell you where it was,” the barista reminded them.

Dib sheepishly waited while she drew him a map, and Gaz noted how close the moon was getting to the sun.

...

Half-an-hour later, the siblings stood in front of the so-called “Higgsbury Hovel”. It wasn’t an accurate name, as it was a two-story home, but it did have a nice ring to it. The house was completely falling apart and rotten, with, yes, graffiti all over it, ranging from very fine artwork to several choice expletives.

Dib’s spelldrive was making noise like there was no tomorrow, and it seemed to have started vibrating slightly. Whatever was in this place, it was not normal.

Gaz pulled a “Do Not Enter” poster, dated back to 2004, off an old post. Underneath, it was a handwritten sign that was faded, and only read G N S A ORK.

“Oh, man,” Dib gushed. “I really hope this place is haunted! We’ll get to meet with the ghost of a mad scientist! Maybe he made some sort of Frankenstein. Or summoned an eldritch horror from beyond!”

“Or maybe he was just crazy,” Gaz stated, noting the unevenness of the old picket fence.

“That’s not what the spelldrive says,” Dib told her, peeking at it once more. This was the place, no doubt.

“Good for it,” Gaz grumbled, blocking her ears. “But there’s nothing out here except thistles. And probably ticks. Deer ticks.” The last part was directed towards her brother, who was wading through the tall grasses to the doorway. The door was hanging by one hinge and swinging back and forth in the wind. “I don’t think that place is very structurally secure,” she called.

Dib did not hear her over the din, and tentatively peeked inside. It was old and grimy, and the sickening sweet smell of rotting wood filled the place.

So far, no ghosts. Dib slowly stepped through the doorway. Gaz watched him from beyond the fence, uninterested in helping her brother with his stupid exploration. She hoped he would injure himself and get tetanus, so she would not be forced to follow him on these escapades, but she doubted that would even faze him. She spotted something unusual out of the corner of her eye and meandered towards it to check it out.

Dib, meanwhile, was creeping further into the house and up the stairs, carefully testing his weight on each one. The eclipse was beginning to cover up almost all of the sun, so he had his flashlight in one hand, ready to switch it on, and a salt-shaker in the other, just in case there was a ghost. The hair on the back of his neck bristled as he felt something drip down onto it.

“Nyaagh!” he exclaimed, wielding his salt-shaker like he was a sous chef (he wasn’t). To his relief, and disappointment, he saw that it was just water dripping from the boards above. It had seemed like there had been a storm recently.

However, looking up did reveal something interesting. On the ceiling, there was a rope hanging from a trapdoor.

An attic. Dib pulled on the hook attached to the rope, and a ladder swung down with an ominous creek.

At this point, most sensible people would probably just distance themselves as far as they possibly could. Actually, most sensible people would probably never even think of going inside a house this decrepit and broken. However, Dib, while smart, was not exactly what you would call sensible. And he did not think of how dangerous this was, but only of the blaring coming from the spelldrive. It was like a Siren’s music to his ears, to hear the possibility of meeting something not of this world. Again.

Gaz, on the other hand, was interested in something that was not on a screen for once. On the side of the house, she had made a rather peculiar find.

A large patch of roses, dusty pink in color, were growing by the side of the house. Around them were no thistles, no weeds, and they looked healthy and well-kept. Yet something else about them was even more curious. It took Gaz a moment to realize, as she had only ever seen roses in picture books and encyclopedias her father had forced her to look at.

It was the color of stems and leaves. At first she had assumed it was because of the now very dim light from the eclipse, but a closer look revealed that her eyes were not fooling her.

The leaves and stems were jet black in color, and the thorns on them had the tiniest tints of white. Gaz decided she disliked these flowers even more than normal ones.

A sudden moving speck in the sky caught her attention, and she walked away from the patch of roses, so as to get a better look. What she didn’t notice was that, as she left, a vine sprouted from the rose patch and slowly crept up the side of the house.

Dib, unhindered by the growing darkness, tentatively poked his head through the hole in the floorboards and shone his flashlight around. Most of the room was uninteresting and dirty. Dirty tables, a dirty chair, dirty skeleton model, which, upon closer inspection, turned out to be fake and not even anatomically correct. Strange how the scientist had managed to get an artificial one in the 1910s. Also, disappointing.

“Hello?” Dib called out, his video camera clutched in one hand, replacing his flashlight. This place must be special, as the Spelldrive showed no stopping in its piercing tones. “Is anyone here?”

He looked to the workbench. There were many old papers, blueprints, an old radio, jars, beakers, an empty rat cage, so… normal mad scientist stuff. Dib had seen pretty much all this equipment, but newer and in better condition, in his father’s lab.

He turned his attention to the other side of the room. There was what could only be described as a broken hunk of some steampunk monstrosity taking up nearly half of the small space. Still, it was the most interesting thing in here, so he decided to check it out. Its gears and handles were rusty, and the wood it was made of was partially rotted. It was impossible to determine what it had even been created for. Dib attempted to tug on a lever, only to find it was quite stuck.

“Hey, if there is a ghost in here, I’m touching your stuff!” he called. There was no reply. Suspicious.

A slight whirring sound reached his ears, and he looked up, suddenly. This sound had caught his attention, not because it was particularly loud, but because it was rather familiar.

“Oh, n-” Dib never got a chance to finish his statement, before something crashed through the roof, showering him with splinters of rotten wood.

A purple, blob-shaped spaceship, plastered with an insignia all too familiar to Dib descended just above the whole it made, and a being jumped out of the cockpit. A green being, slightly shorter than Dib, wearing a pompadour wig and purple contact lenses, so as to hide his true identity.

“Zim.” Dib balled his fists and took a defensive stance. The alien was smaller than him at this point, but he fought dirty.

Zim’s eyes flicked to him and widened in shock, before narrowing with intense rage. “Dib. I should have known you’d poke your giant head into my retrieval mission. How did you find out?”

Dib quirked an eyebrow. “What? I came here first! Were you following me?”

“FOOLISH TURKEYBOY!” Zim exclaimed, jabbing his pointy gloved finger in Dib’s direction. “You think that you could possibly handle technology that can manipulate time and space?!”

“Time-an- What are you talking about?! I’m here because this place is haunted! See?!” Dib held up the spelldrive as proof of his claim, continuing its overwhelming racket.

“Stupid earthlings and their dissatisfaction with their pathetically short lifespans mean nothing to me! Something in this place has energy contained in it beyond anything I thought was possible for your pathetic world!” Zim hissed. “And not going to let you keep me from getting it!”

Dib growled. There was no reasoning with Zim. Maybe the energy from whatever was haunting this place was powerful enough to show up on the alien’s sensitive computer systems. It didn’t matter what it was, though. If Zim thought it was powerful, he would use it to conquer earth. The alien was not hard to figure out.

He dropped his spelldrive and charged the alien, full-body tackling him and taking advantage of his own larger size and weight. Zim, taken by surprise, was rammed into the floorboards, but quickly recovered, kicking Dib in the gut. He tried to extend his mechanical spider limbs, but Dib grabbed one and shoved it through the rotten floor, sending Zim to his knees. The alien retracted the biomechanical limbs and swept his leg out, tripping Dib and causing him to bang his head on a table. The alien approached, leering while Dib tried to blink the stars out of his eyes. In bleary panic, the teen reached out and grabbed onto a glass beaker, smashing it and the muddy liquid inside onto Zim’s face. The alien pulled back and let out a blood-curdling screech as his skin hissed and steamed where it made contact with the foul-smelling concoction.

Dib shakily got to his feet as Zim clawed his face. The alien turned to glare at Dib with enough malice to turn a serial killer’s blood to ice. “Stay out of my way, Dib!”

Dib clenched his hands into fists. “I don’t care what you’re planning, Zim, but I’m going to stop you!” He sounded a lot more confident than he felt, as his vision still wasn’t working properly. Why was everything getting so dark… wait, the solar eclipse. Dib stumbled forward. For a second, he thought his sense of balance was still off, but his nemesis had tripped and grabbed onto the edge of a chair to keep himself from falling as well.

There was flickering at the edge of his vision, and Zim let out a noise of disgust, staring at something over Dib’s shoulder. He turned slightly, only to do a double take when he saw what had shocked Zim.

A long black vine, sprouting with healthy pink roses was growing at an alarming rate, practically shooting through the window. Wherever it grew, the rotten wood crumbled at its touch, which was what was likely causing the foundation to shake.

Though the roses had several branches splitting off from one main stem, they all seemed to be rapidly converging onto one spot: the machine at the other end of the room.

The spell-drive let out a high-pitched screech before letting out a shower of sparks, completely dead, overpowered by the energy converging in the area. Dib did not have time to mourn his loss, though, as the stems wrapped around the machine, enclosing it in a living cocoon, the roses turning white and marble-like, as though a fungus was spreading down them.

Dib was vaguely aware that this was a wildly dangerous supernatural activity occurring, but he was too transfixed to look away. It was only when the roses started pulling down the lever with a spine-tingling screech of rusty metal that he was able to shake off this hypnotic effect. In the center of the archway, black sparks flew before spreading out to fill the entire center.

It was not safe to be here. He had not expected anything like this. He stumbled back a few feet before a sheet of paper flew up and past his face, into the vortex. Then, with dawning horror, Dib realized that the force was beginning to pull on him.

He tried to move his legs, but it was like trying to walk through syrup. The pull was strong and getting stronger. Something grabbed the back of his trench-coat, making him start. Zim was trying to resist the pull, latching onto Dib to save himself.

“Get off me!” Dib started kicking the alien as he gripped onto the edge of a heavy cabinet.

“I’m not getting involved in one of your IDIOTIC ghost schemes!” Zim growled, tightening his grip.

“You came here yourself!” Dib yelled, seriously in danger of losing his grip with Zim’s added weight.

“SILENCE!”

The force was so strong now Dib’s legs left the floor. He grabbed a shelf on the cabinet, managing to tug himself forward before something hit his shoulder. A large shard of glass from the beaker he had thrown at Zim impaled itself through his coat.

With the sudden pain, Dib’s grip weakened for just a second, but that was all it took.

He flew backwards, flailing for something, anything to grab onto. It was already too late.

Both Dib and his arch-nemesis were swallowed by the swirling archway, and they were falling, falling, falling…


	3. Awake and Alone?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whoop, we're at the Constant! Yay, everybody's gonna die!

When Dib returned to consciousness, the first thing he was aware of was the pain in his shoulder.

He opened his eyes, then shut them quickly as light flooded into them, taking a moment to try to get his bearings straight. His shoulder ached with a dull pounding, but if he moved his arm even slightly, sharp pain went through it like a bolt of lightning. He slowly pushed himself into a sitting position using only his right arm and opened his eyes while shielding them with his hand.

After a moment of adjusting, he realized that he was in the middle of a meadow, evergreen trees, wild flowers, and tall stalks of grass decorating a few areas. It didn’t look anything like the field of weeds and rotting boards surrounding the old house he had just been in.

A memory resurfaced suddenly. Where was Zim?! he looked around frantically for the alien, but all was quiet. He relaxed again.

“Ouch!” He craned his neck to get a good look at the glass in his shoulder. It wasn’t too deep, but it had had a lot of force behind it, considering it had been able to pierce through his trench coat and t-shirt. Before he could think about it too much, he clenched his teeth and pulled it out as quickly and as smoothly as he could. It hurt, but it didn’t seem to be bleeding too badly.

He got to his feet, looking around. About forty feet away to his left, the field gave way to a forest full of evergreens. And way off in the distance, a savannah full of grassy tufts.

“Okay,” he said aloud to help clarify his thoughts. “So, that guy must have built some sort of teleporter. And maybe Zim’s spaceship or the spelldrive being in proximity to it somehow activated it?” The theory sort of made sense when he said it. The only thing he couldn’t quite figure out was the roses…

Maybe there was a reason. But right now, he needed to find some sign of civilization. This place looked fairly nice. It couldn’t be too far from some sort of settlement, right? Then he’d just need to get in touch with his dad or… Gaz… Dib slapped his head. “Oh, man, she must be so worried!” He weighed his options for a moment before deciding to walk towards the savannah. The visibility would be better there.

…  
Dib’s first clue that this place was not normal was the jackalopes.

He’d been walking for about half-an-hour through the grassland, trying to find any sign of a manmade structure when he heard a rustling sound. Turning towards it, he did a double-take.

It was a rabbit, rather sizable, but its most noticeable feature was definitely the curly brown horns sprouting from in front of its ears.

He stood stock-still, trying to figure out if this was real or a hallucination from hitting his head too hard.

Something rustled the grass, scaring the jackalope off. Dib started and turned to the source of the sound, slightly annoyed, before his mouth dropped open.

The creature in front of him looked like a bunch of ungulates thrown together, shaggy like a buffalo, antlers like a moose, and stocky like the world’s biggest and fattest cow. Dib had liked to look through encyclopedias a lot when he was younger, but he was absolutely sure he had never read about anything like this.

It was staring at him, or at least he guessed it was. It had no irises or pupils, so it was hard to tell. Maybe it had some kind of parasite or infection. After a moment, it seemed to realize he posed no threat and went back to its grazing.

Uncertainty forgotten, Dib had to verbally restrain his excitement. Two completely unheard of species appearing before him. He just needed to bring back some proof of their existence.

Dib’s stomach suddenly growled, causing the nearby beast to look up. He realized he still had no idea where he was and no way of getting back home. More importantly, he had no idea where Zim was. Who knew what kind of havoc he could wreak unattended.

Dib took out his camera, and snapped a quick photo. He couldn’t do anything with it, without his computer, but at least he had it. He looked back up at the sky. It seemed like it was noon, but it was hard to tell for sure, as a haze seemed to cover the sky, making it appear yellowish white, rather than blue.

Despite wanting to study the animals more, he did have to find some sort of civilization. He had no food, no way of contacting other people, and his backpack had come off when he was fighting Zim, so he couldn’t even gather anything. He looked around again. Nearby, the savannah gradually turned to a green meadow. He could see ponds, birch trees, and berry bushes, but looking closer, he saw something which really excited him. A cobblestone path.

“Oh, hey!” The nearby ungulates looked up in surprise and then seemed annoyed, but he barely paid them any attention, finally happy to have a lead.

…

Dib had been walking along the path for nearly an hour now, and his hunger was beginning to become unbearable. He didn’t get it; he was normally a very light eater, and he didn’t have a problem with skipping meals, but his stomach was growling near constantly. The berry bushes he kept passing by began to look more and more appealing.

Initially, he’d ignored them, thinking they might be poisonous, due to their bright red coloration. But now he was beginning to wonder. There were other types of berries that were red, and they weren’t poisonous. He wished he had a guidebook on him.

Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore and walked over to one of the bushes. He picked a berry and rolled it in his hand. It didn’t look bad or anything. His stomach gave another rumble and he began salivating. He couldn’t remember the last time he was this hungry.

He popped one in his mouth. It didn’t taste bad. He swallowed and waited. He felt fine. While he wanted to eat more, he also realized that he should probably wait to make sure they didn’t have any bad effects. But he should also pick some more in case they were fine, and he needed something to eat later.

He stripped the bush bare and moved on to another. He looked back up at the sky. It was slowly fading to a rusty color. He really hoped he could find people before nightfall; he doubted his flashlight would last the whole night.

There was one more bush just a little bit away. He didn’t have a lot of berries, so he walked over to pick this one as well.

One second, he was on his feet, reaching for the berries, and the next, he was upside down and hanging in the air. “WHA-!”

His swinging inadvertently caused him to bang his head on the trunk of the tree he was hanging from, and his eyes welled up from pain. “Ow! Ow, ow…” He looked up at his leg. A loop was around it. A snare trap. He reached up, but could not get a good grip on the knot. Great. Now he knew for sure there were people out here. He also had no way of looking for them. His glasses had also fallen off, so he was practically blind.

A barking noise came from nearby, startling him. It sounded like a small dog, one of those irritating yappy ones. He was pretty sure they couldn’t survive on their own in the wild, though. He listened closely and realized there was something else, too. A low warbling, which as it got louder, he realized was extremely off-key singing.

“If you get there, before I do~ Coming for to carry me home~ Tell all my friends I’m coming ho-”

“Hey!” Dib called. “Hey! Is someone there?!”

The singing stopped. “Who’s there?” The speaker sounded young, like he was Dib’s age, or maybe even younger than that.

“I’m stuck! There’s this snare trap, and I can’t get out of it!”

There was a pause. “Hold on! Keep talking so I can find you! Where are you?”

Dib looked around as best he could. “Uh, there’s some berry bushes, and a tree with orange leaves… and a pond.”

Dib heard rustling, and a small brown blob popped out of the bushes, and ran directly underneath him revealing itself to be a small brown dog. It stared at him for a moment, then barked.

A moment later, another brown blob appeared out of the bushes, though this one was definitely a person. “Oh, wow.”

Dib held his arms out. “Wait, my glasses fell off! Don’t step on them!”

The kid looked down, kneeled on the ground, and picked something up, holding it out to Dib. His glasses. Dib gratefully held them on his face so he could get a good look at his savior.

He was a skinny kid wearing a scout uniform, though Dib wasn’t sure what group that color was associated with. He’d never been into that kind of stuff. His skin was the color of hot cocoa, and freckles dotted his cheeks. Through the grin on his face, Dib could see he had a gap in his front teeth.

“Wow… Uh… Okay. Uh… I’m gonna have to cut you down,” he said, clearly amused. “Hang on.” He grabbed the base of the tree and shimmied up, making his way carefully down the branch that held Dib. He started sawing at the rope holding Dib with something and a second later, Dib was back on the ground, a little worse for wear. The little dog nearby was barking at him frantically and pawing the ground as though expecting a fight.

The kid dropped down from the tree. “Heel, Woby.” The dog obediently stopped barking, though it fixed a cautious look on Dib. The kid helped him up.

“You must be pretty light,” the kid mused. “Those snares are for turkeys. I’m surprised it even held you.”

Dib rubbed his head and readjusted his glasses. “Yeah, well, I’ll be sure to be fatter next time I get caught in one.”

The kid grinned. “You’re new here. My name’s Walter. What’s yours?”

“Dib.”

“Nice to meet you, Dib.” He held out a hand. Dib returned it, wincing slightly at the pain in his shoulder. Walter looked him over. “What happened? That looks like it hurts.”

Dib followed his gaze and saw the blood had dried around it, making it appear worse than it was. “Oh… some glass got stuck in it. It’s not that bad, but I think I still might need stitches. It was pretty dirty, too. But it should be fine until I can get to a hospital or something.”

Walter stopped examining it and looked back up at him. His expression seemed a bit pained. “Oh… Uh, I have some first-aid supplies. There’s some disinfectant.” He whistled, and his dog, who’d been sniffing around a mole hill, immediately returned to his side. “Why don’t you sit down? And… can you tell me how you got here?”

…

“So, we both got pulled in. And then I woke up alone near that field with the jackalopes. That was only a few hours ago,” Dib finished. Walter had been pretty quiet the whole time, mostly just directing Dib on how to apply the foul-smelling disinfectant he’d supplied. Dib had expected him to say something once he explained what Zim was, but he had only given a slight shudder.

Walter took a deep breath, and his face suddenly split into a wide grin. “Okay, there’s a lot of stuff I have to tell you, but I just want to say, I knew aliens were real!”

Dib balked. “You believe me? Just like that?”

“Of course I do! People always used to tell me that they were just science fiction, but I KNEW they weren’t!” Walter was practically dancing with excitement, and Woby seemed to have caught on, barking and nudging him. He scratched her behind the ears distractedly. “Wow! A real spaceship… I mean, that’s just so cool…” He looked up at the sky. “Oh, we need to get back. Crud, I got really distracted.” He picked up Woby and stood back up, gesturing for Dib to follow him. “The most important thing to know about being out here is don’t get stuck without a light.”

As they walked down the trail, Walter handed him a bag of trail mix, which Dib gratefully accepted. This kid really was prepared.

“So, why is your troupe camping here? Wait, are you part of a group of paranormal investigators, too?”

Walter frowned. “Troupe?”

“Um, yeah? Your uniform and everything?”

A look of realization lit up his features. “Oh! Oh, no, I’m the only Pinetree Pioneer. Nah, besides you, I’m the newest person to come here. We’re not… well, uh… Ms. Wickerbottom and Wilson would do a better job of explaining it than I could.” His expression took on that pained look again.

“Wait, what do you mean-”

Woby let out a whine and Walter suddenly held out an arm to stop him. “Shh…” He pointed to a large shape weaving its way around the bases of the evergreen trees. At first, Dib thought it was a raccoon, but it walked out of the shadows of the trees and in the warm reddish glow of dusk, Dib realized it was a spider the size of a volleyball.

Or rather, it looked like a spider. It had one segment to its body rather than two, and it possessed six legs rather than eight, but it was definitely the closest approximation he could make.

“Tha-that’s really big…” Dib said, a bit shocked. He wasn’t afraid of spiders, but this was just ridiculous.

“Oh, they get bigger than that,” Walter said, matter of factly. His voice was lowered to a hush. “Okay, so, they’re pretty blind, and if they don’t hear you or you don’t hurt their buddies, you’ll be fine. Just stay a few meters away. Oh, and don’t get close to their nests.”

“Nests?!”

“Shh! Believe me, you’ll know. We’ll just keep following the path and you won’t have to worry, we’re almost at the camp,” he reassured.

The spider on the path ahead of them wandered back off into the trees, but now that Dib knew what he was looking for, it seemed as though there were spiders everywhere, hidden in the shadows of the evergreens, waiting to pounce.

He didn’t get a chance to think about it, though. Walter grabbed his arm and started running down the path, dragging Dib behind him, until the teen got over his initial shock and kept pace with him. Somewhere behind them, Dib could hear Woby’s pants.

Walter let out a yelp upon noticing a spider walk across the trail right in front of him and stopped, seemingly oblivious to the teenagers and dog barreling towards it. He tried to grab Dib’s coat, but all this accomplished was to make Dib lose his footing and painfully tumble directly into the beast.

“Augh!” Dib screeched in disgust upon contact with the spider. For a moment, it simply seemed surprised, then let out a hiss and bared sharp fangs directly in his face. Or at least, it did until Walter kicked it twenty feet away like a soccer ball, the poor thing letting out a pained squeak as it went flying.

Dib suddenly became aware of hundreds of white eyes, practically glowing in the deep twilight, fixed directly on them. Walter dragged him to his feet. “Run.”

Dib had no problem with that. In the distance, he could actually see the warm glow of flame from a campfire.

A pained howl rang out, causing Walter to screech to a halt. “Woby!”

Dib saw the small dog, a spider’s jaws clamped firmly around her back paw. Without a thought, he grabbed her and pried the spider off her leg, throwing the attacker behind him and into the crowd of its surging allies. Hugging the squirming dog to his chest, he sped up again to reach Walter. He could actually see the camp now: a long stone wall surrounded by lampposts with a latched gate leading into it.

Walter raced ahead and kicked the gate open, Dib flying past him and collapsing on the ground, releasing Woby as he did so. Relatching the gate, Walter managed a few stumbling steps before falling onto his butt next to him, an insane adrenaline fueled smile on his face. Woby, her pride hurt worse than her leg, apparently, ran into his arms, trembling.

Someone cleared their throat and Dib looked up into the faces of five very confused looking adults.

“I’m back,” Walter managed to get out between pants.

…

He whirled around, fixing a glare on the whisps trying to close in on him. They retreated back to the shadows, scared of his presence, as they should be.

“Filthies! Shut up!” he barked at them. “If you interrupt me again, I’ll rocket you into the stratosphere before you can even blink your stupid eyes! Er, eye… Eyeholes!” He returned to staring at the white glow flowing out of the fissure in the ground. “You’re right, of course! Anyone else would be in awe, but-”

-

“Well obviously! What else would I do?”

-

“What?! Why would I?! He deserves to suffer! It’s his fault I’m here in this place!”

-

“Hmm… Truly? You possess such knowledge?”

-

“I… no! What am I doing?! Eurgh! You’re trying to distract me! No one distracts me! NO ONE!” He got up in a huff, walking off into the darkness. He couldn’t see, but that didn’t bother him. None of the dirty little stinkbeasts on this awful place had paid him any heed when he’d approached earlier.

This darkness, though. It was thick, and heavy, almost like walking into a mist, and he felt mildly unsettled. Ridiculous, of course.

His antennae twitched. He swore something moved just to the side… Or was it in front?

A horrible gasping sound tore through the night.

“Who’s there?! Who dares threaten the mighty-”

Pain. Shocking pain, shooting through his gut, shoving him to the ground. “Uh…” The presence was gone.

Momentarily.

“Where…” His eyes went to the glowing fissure, in the same spot as before, inviting and gentle blue light flowing from it. He forced himself to his feet and began to lurch towards it.

A hiss. The awful beast was back, prowling. Circling him like a wolf. Feeling it reach for him again, he put on a burst of speed, reaching the light just as it made to grasp him and pull him back.

He collapsed on his stomach, panting. While he could see no scratches or bruises, he could feel his organs bleeding. No matter. Already, his PAK was doing repairs, though to think that something he could not fight against had damaged him so extensively was… He stopped thinking about it.

He crawled closer to the light.

-

“Don’t think this means anything. I just… do not want to stray far for tonight. Soon, I will be out of here and will have no need of you at all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hmm.


	4. Meeting the Weirdos

A lady with jet black hair in pigtails was the first to break the silence. “Wow. You found someone with a bigger head than Wilson.”

Dib immediately hated her.

An old lady wearing spectacles walked past and helped Dib sit up. “Oh, dear. Your shoulder is injured.”

Dib followed her gaze and saw that the wound, which had healed with a thin scab, had been torn back open again in the chase with the spiders, looking worse than before. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, he was aware of how much it hurt.

“If you can stand, ah, there you go, young man.” She turned to the others. “Wilson, could you fetch the sewing kit, please? Now, if you’ll just follow me.”

Dib stumbled along behind her, his legs cramped after running. He felt like this lady was all business, and didn’t even seem surprised by his sudden appearance. Maybe this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened.

She led him into a tent, and when Walter, who’d been following along behind, tried to enter, she stopped him. “I’m sorry, Walter, but he’s going to need stitches. I don’t think you want to see that.”

Dib felt a bit sick to his stomach. Then he looked at Walter, whose face had turned from the color of milk chocolate to an ashy gray, as though he was about to throw up. “I don’t… mind?” He appeared to be trying to stay calm for Dib’s sake.

“It’s okay, Walter,” Dib spoke up. He hadn’t realized the boy was so squeamish. He seemed fine when he’d first seen Dib’s shoulder, but it hadn’t been bleeding as badly then. Maybe he was a hemophobe? “It’s not the first time I had to get stitches. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” Walter looked relieved. “I’ll just wait out here, with Woby.”

The old lady smiled at him gently, and guided Dib inside the tent. She directed him to sit down on top of a bedroll and told him to take off his jacket and shirt. “It doesn’t look too severe, we just want to prevent an infection. Now, what’s your name, young man?”

“Uh… Dib Membrane, ma’am?”

“Hmm…” was her reply. It almost sounded as though she was judging him just for his name. “Nice to meet you, Dib. You may call me Ms. Wickerbottom. You’ll need to- Ah.”

Another one of the people who’d been around the campfire, the one who Ms. Wickerbottom told to get the sewing kit, opened up the tent flap. He carried a spool and a white needle in his one hand and some of the same disinfectant Walter had given him earlier in the other.

“I brought the kit,” he said. “And I figured we would need this as well.”

“Ah, thank you, Wilson,” Wickerbottom said, gratefully taking them both. “Alright, dear, lay down and try to relax.”

He obeyed, and Wickerbottom grabbed a large book with a purple cover. He was about to ask if it was a medical manual, before she opened it and the text began to glow a faint yellow color.

If anyone asked him to repeat what she read, he wouldn’t be able to do it. He was fairly sure it was English, but it was almost as if it were English words that had never been spoken before. He couldn’t think of any other way to explain it. One thing he knew for certain, though: she was working magic.

The last thing he saw before everything faded to black was Wilson, his hands over his ears.

…

Something warm and wet was on Dib’s face, and he automatically threw his hands up to get it off, touching something fluffy. He opened his eyes and saw Woby’s golden ones staring back at him.

“Oh, good! You’re up!” Walter said, looking up from the rope he was braiding. “How’s your arm feeling?”

Dib looked over and saw that his arm was tightly bandaged with a scratchy fabric. It definitely didn’t feel as irritated or dirty as before. “That… actually feels a lot better.”

Walter grinned. “Yeah, Wickerbottom and Wilson are pretty good with that sort of stuff. They’ve stitched me up a few times. C’mon, it’s almost time for breakfast.”

Pulling on his shirt and jacket, Dib got up and followed him out of the tent. The air was cool and damp, and there was a chill in the air. He was glad for his trench coat, and didn’t miss Walter’s slight shivering in his simple scout uniform. Across the yard, close to the dying campfire, the people Dib had briefly seen the night before were all working, even though the sun was just barely over the horizon.

A lady with a red bandana and Wilson were setting up a tent near the others, the lady with pigtails was coming in from a gated-off garden with a basket full of vegetables, and Wickerbottom was weaving something out of grass.

As they walked, Walter said, “I hope you don’t mind. You were asleep, so I told them how you got here.”

“Oh… that’s fine,” Dib said, figuring that it was hardly the weirdest thing these people had probably heard.

There was a clanging noise, and a man with curly hair was banging a ladle on the side of a metal pot suspended over a fire. “Mes amies, it’s ready!” He spoke with a rich, Caribbean accent. The four other adults immediately stopped their activities and hurried over to the fire pit.

Walter grabbed Dib’s sleeve and ran with the rest of them. “C’mon! Warly’s a really good cook. They’re all gonna eat it if we don’t!”

As they reached the firepit, Wickerbottom noticed they’d joined. “Ah, Dib, it’s good you’re awake. I wasn’t sure if you would need more time to recover.”

“Uh, no, thanks,” Dib said. “That actually helped a lot.” He really did feel a lot better after getting a whole night of sleep. He also wondered about the book Wickerbottom had read, but his thoughts were interrupted before he could ask.

“Ah, our new arrival,” the chef said, smiling at him, the wrinkles around his eyes creasing. “I always enjoy cooking for a new palette. Tell me, is there anything you do not eat? I am more than happy to accommodate for the… more particular of taste buds.”

Dib watched as he served Walter some fried eggs with a big slice of bacon on the side. His mouth watered. “Actually, this looks great. Thanks.”

The man, Warly, he guessed, smiled warmly and handed Dib a plate full of breakfast food.

The group sat around the fire pit, the pig-tailed lady poking the last of the embers in an attempt to coax a little warmth out of them.

Wickerbottom cleared her throat. “Winona, Willow, Wilson, Warly, this is Dib. I expect you’ll all teach him what he needs to know about living here.”

Dib choked on his bacon. “‘Living here’? No… wait… I mean, this place is really cool, but I gotta get back home. My sister and my dad don’t know where I am or anything.” And he didn’t know where Zim was. That was another big concern. “I do want to come back when I’m more prepared, though.”

At once, the inattentive or bored expressions of the adults changed to identical looks of uneasiness.

“Hey, uh… Walter,” the pig-tailed lady asked after a few seconds of silence. “How much detail did you go into when you told him about this place?”

Walter set his plate aside as though the bacon suddenly lost all appeal. “I mean… I kinda got distracted, and I thought Ms. Wickerbottom and Wilson…” his voice trailed off towards the end.

Wilson spoke up. “Thanks for that, Walter, because we all love telling people about the Constant,” he said, a touch of aggression in his voice. Walter’s head hung in shame.

“Higgsbury,” Wickerbottom said, warningly. Must have been Wilson’s last name. She cleared her throat. “You four can go start on your tasks for today. I’ll catch up shortly. Walter, please go weed the gardens. I’ll call you when I need you.”

“Yes, Ms. Wickerbottom.”

“Fine.”

“Of course, ma’am.”

The other filtered out, leaving Dib alone with Wickerbottom. She sighed and rubbed her glasses on her shirt. “My dear, there’s a lot of things you need to learn about the Constant.”

…

Dib pursed his lips. The sun had risen by this point and was shining down on them, but he felt cold inside. Walter was leaning on the gate to the garden, eavesdropping. Wickerbottom either hadn’t noticed, or didn’t care.

“I’m sorry, Dib,” she said, her voice softening just slightly. “If we had a way back, we would have used it by now.”

Dib was feeling a lot of emotions, anger, disbelief, sadness, but when they all swirled together, he just felt numb. This was stupid; he spent his whole life dedicated to searching for the paranormal, and finally, when he found a place full of the stuff, he couldn’t even show it to the world. If that wasn’t a Monkey’s Paw situation, he didn’t know what was. “So… we’re stuck here forever?”

“I honestly don’t know. This place may be called the Constant, but it’s ever-changing. Perhaps one day, there will be a way home, but until then…” She got up and put a hand on his shoulder. “I have to help the others with gathering. Walter will show you everything you need to know around the camp. We won’t be far if you have a need for us.”

She spared one backwards glance at him as she exited the walls of their camp.

“Sorry I didn’t tell you,” Walter said from behind him. Dib flinched. He’d been so deep in thought he hadn’t even noticed him creeping up from behind. He looked very sad and shameful.

“I mean… I wish you had, but… I guess I get why you didn’t,” Dib said.

Walter was silent for a few more seconds. Dib guessed he was probably thinking about his own family. He perked up after a second, practically flailing his hands in excitement. “Oh, oh! I just remembered! Wormwood and Webber are coming back from their fishing trip today! We should go meet them!” He stood up and walked out the gate. With no other choice, besides staying behind and being left alone, he followed.

“Wait, there’s more people?” Dib asked, though he guessed it should have been obvious given how many tents were scattered across the camp.

Walter, who had swung his backpack around front and was currently rooting inside, replied, “Oh, yeah, there’s  _ way _ more people than just us. Webber and Wormwood are both super nice and… uh… well, let’s just say, you’ll like them both a lot.” Walter had a grin on his face that suggested he was hiding a surprise.

Dib was about to ask what he meant by that, but was distracted by what Walter held in his hands. “Uh… is that jerky… purple?”

“Yeah, it’s from the spiders.”

Dib’s stomach lurched. “Please don’t tell me you’re gonna eat that.”

Walter laughed and shook his head. “No way; I’ve already tried that, it’s poisonous to humans. Nah, this is for Woby.” Hearing her name, Woby perked up, and ran to Walter's side. “Here you go, girl.” He tossed the meat behind them, and she fell back to get it.

Dib remembered something Walter had said earlier. “So, do you guys have a boat? What’s out there?” He gestured to the ocean.

“Lots of stuff! Fish, kelp, monsters, plants that are alive… There’s an island, too, but Wickerbottom says I’m not allowed to go,” Walter said. “Wendy… Oh, Wendy’s another kid here, anyway, Wendy says that place makes you go crazy, and anything that lives there gets mutated, because it’s made of a piece of the moon.”

That was a lot to process. “The moon? Really?”

“Oh, yeah! You can’t see it now, because it’s the new moon, but there’s a big chunk missing from it! It just fell into the ocean one day. That was before I came. It’s really weird.” Walter continued, “But, yeah, there’s a lot of stuff. I think Webber and Wormwood were just getting fish and barnacles, though.”

As they were walking, they came upon bandana-lady (Dib was pretty sure her name was Winona), digging up a bush. She wiped her forehead and watched them pass. “Hey, squirts, where are you off to?”

“I’m taking Dib to meet Webber and Wormwood!” Walter replied cheerily.

Winona scowled. “You’re not slacking off, are you?”

Fidgeting slightly, Walter replied, “I mean, we’re gonna help them bring stuff back.”

Winona tipped her head at something behind them. “You mean, Woby’s gonna help.”

Dib was suddenly aware of hot steamy breath on his neck, and he froze. He turned in place slightly, and saw a massive tongue framed by dull yellow teeth in a mouth large enough to swallow him whole. “AAAGH!” Dib flew backwards, tripping over his feet and landing on his back.

There was a huge shaggy form looming over them. It was canine and looked like an Ovcharka… if instead of being the size of a person, it was the size of a full-grown buffalo and possessed crooked yellow horns. Dib’s heart was pounding in his chest.

“Woah, woah, Dib, it’s fine! It’s just Woby!” Walter exclaimed, waving his hands out. “You’re scaring her!”

“I’m scaring her?!” Dib’s pulse slowed just a touch, and he realized that the giant beast before them did bear many similarities to Walter's dog.

Walter grabbed either side of her face in his hands. “Who’s a big baby? Who’s afraid of butterflies? You are, yes you are!” Woby reciprocated the affection by licking his entire face. Gross.

Hearing a squeaking noise from his left, Dib looked over to see Winona grabbing her chest and leaning on her shovel. She noticed Dib looking at her. “Your face!” she managed to gasp out between laughs.

“Yeah, haha,” Dib grumbled, brushing himself off. “Make fun of the new guy.”

“Aw, c’mon Dib,” Walter said. “It was kinda funny. Here, get over here, I’ll give you a boost.”

It took Dib a second to realize what he meant. “Wait… what?”

…

“I can’t believe it! Her whole anatomy changed just by eating that stuff! There’s got to be some seriously mutagenic properties to that stuff! Either that or Woby’s a hellhound or something!”

Woby was not particularly comfortable, but Dib still found riding her to be one of the most enjoyable experiences he’d had in a while. Though she was initially reluctant to let Dib on her back, Walter eventually managed to coax her into it. He was glad, too, because from the distance they were traveling, it would have taken them a good hour just to get there on foot.

“Woby’s just a good girl!” Walter said, scratching her head for emphasis. They had dismounted and were making their way to a small walled area by the edge of the water. There was no shore. It was simply a sheer side which the water came right up to. Walter warned him not to get too close. “Wendy says the monsters will grab you. I’m not sure if she was joking or not,” he offered as explanation.

They both sat on the walls of the area, which led to a tiny pier. While they sat, Walter was teaching Dib how to weave rope. Dib’s attempts were pretty pathetic compared to Walter, whose hands practically glided as he worked, but Walter was encouraging, at least.

“Hey, Walter,” Dib asked, suddenly curious. “Where was the machine you went through to get here?” Secretly, Dib was hoping that if multiple people were disappearing in the same spot, people would notice. There was also the guy who had built that machine (Dib had already forgotten his name.). He must have died a long time ago, but maybe there was some sort of clue on how to build it he had left behind.

Walter’s hands stopped moving as quickly on his rope. “Oh… Um, I didn’t come here the same way you did.”

“There’s more than one way here?” Dib asked.

Walter nodded. “Yeah. I was cryptid-hunting, this was in Canada, by the way, I’m not American, and I was looking for this guy I thought might know about the Werebeaver!”

Dib raised an eyebrow. “Werebeaver?”

“Hey! It’s a very well-known cryptid in Vancouver! I don’t see why that’s so much weirder believing in aliens,” Walter shot back.

“Touche. Anyway, what happened?”

Walter became quiet again. “I found his cabin in the woods. So I went in to see if he was home.”

“Wait, a minute, you just walked in this random dude’s cabin in the woods? That’s just asking for some serial killer to dismember you.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know it was dumb, Ms. Wickerbottom already gave me a lecture,” Walter scowled before continuing. “I went in there and…” he paused, as though physically in pain. “Sorry, it’s a little hard to talk about.”

Dib felt a twinge in his chest. “You don’t have to, I shouldn’t have asked-”

Walter waved a hand casually. “Nah, you told me how you got here. It’s fine.” Dib could see it wasn’t, but Walter picked up the story again. “There was a… radio. No one was there, but it was on, and it was just playing static.” Something about that sounded really familiar, but Dib waited for Walter to talk again. “I just wanted to see if I could get it to work. It was stupid of me. I did it without even thinking. And then-”

Walter’s eyes were wide, and he was biting his lip. For a kid who would run through a forest full of spiders and laugh about it afterwards, he looked pretty scared. “Anyway, after that, I just woke up in the forest, and I found Woby.” The dog let out a deep bark at that. She rubbed her head against Walter’s body, nearly pushing him off the wall. “Or, she found me, really,” Walter laughed, scratching her ears. “I didn’t go through a machine, sorry.”

“Oh.”

Walter sensed his disappointment. “But, hey! Winona did! It wasn’t the same one as you, and she didn’t make it, but maybe it was made by the same person, or they had the same blueprints or something.”

That gave Dib a little hope. He’d have to talk to Winona. She seemed like a down-to-earth person, from his brief interactions with her.

He was about to ask Walter where she was from when he suddenly pointed far out to sea, gesturing to something moving in the distant surf. “Hey! That’s them!”

He jumped down and raced to the edge of the water, whooping loudly. The figures on the ship waved back after a moment. Dib walked to Walter’s side, trying to get a good view of the people, but they were far and the sun was at their backs. As the boat got closer, Walter’s smile faded a bit.

“Uh… Dib. There’s one really important thing to know about Webber. Well, Wormwood, too, but especially Webber.”

That sure was reassuring. “Oh, boy. Do they grow ten times the size when they eat spider meat, too?”

Walter laughed. “Haha, nah. That would be cool though! That sounds like an episode of the Cryptid Features. Do you listen to it? Wait, sorry, getting distracted again. Um, what was I talking about? Oh, right. They’re both very sensitive, so you need to be nice to them. Wormwood is really afraid of losing all his friends, and Webber’s only ten, so he sometimes cries if you make him upset.”

“Only ten? How’d a ten-year-old end up here?”

“I don’t know, he wouldn’t tell me. Anyway, Webber looks… pretty weird, but one of the nicest people in the entire universe, so don’t… scream when you see him… please?”

While that was an unusual request, Dib agreed readily. After all, he went to school with an alien with genuine bug antennae and eyes. It didn’t get a whole lot weirder than that.

…

Apparently, around here, it did get a whole lot weirder, because when the boat pulled up to shore, Walter only managed to keep Dib from letting out a yelp of surprise by elbowing him in the ribs, turning it to a yelp of pain.

**“Wow! Someone new came while we were gone? Our name is Webber! Walter, why did you push him? That’s mean!”** said the spider-headed child in front of them.

“Just teasing him, Webber! His name’s Dib! He just got here yesterday!” Walter flashed Dib a look that seemed to say, ‘Stop staring and say something!’ Well, Walter had said he was Canadian; politeness was a big thing there.

“Uh… Uh… h-hey?” Dib ventured tentatively. “Nice to meet you?”

Webber quirked some of his smaller eyes, almost like an eyebrow. The expression was quite strange to see on an animal face. After a second, however, he grinned once more, showing off a mouth full of razor sharp fangs.  **“It’s okay, Dib. We know we look weird. Don’t worry, we don’t bite, not like our friends.”**

The moment Webber pointed out his discomfort, it immediately drained away. “I was just kinda surprised. Walter didn’t really tell me what to expect.”

Webber fixed a look on Walter, who had become very interested in making sure his boot laces were tied.  **“That doesn’t surprise us. He always likes making people guess the endings to his campfire stories.”**

“Surprises are fun. Nice ones,” said the other person on the boat, who had been tying the mast until just a moment ago.

The shock of seeing Webber had distracted him for a second, but when he noticed the figure standing behind him, his eyes widened further than he thought they could go. Unlike Webber, who did look like a person besides the obvious spider-head and fur, this bore none of the resemblances to a human. Twiggy, was the way Dib would describe him. Partially because he was tall and thin, but mostly because he was an actual tree.

He moved close to Dib, a little too close for comfort, and examined him, giving Dib the chance to do so as well. It was a mass of vines, forced into vaguely humanoid shape. His eyes and mouth were just holes in his head, almost like a jack o'lantern, but his eyes squinted and blinked just like a human’s. Cradled in the center of his chest was a gently pulsing gem, green and shiny as a piece of hard candy.

After a moment, the tree apparently decided he was satisfied, and smiled. He reached out a limb and patted Dib gently on the head before he could stop him. He gestured to himself with the leaves on the end of his arm (?), which moved around as dexterously as fingers. “Wormwood. Always like meeting new small friends.”

Dib found himself grinning at that. “Wormwood, huh? That’s a good name.”

Wormwood beamed at that. Walter let out a small cough. “Hey, Webber, I promised Winona we’d help you bring stuff back, and it’s getting kinda late. We should get started.”

Webber suddenly bounced up.  **“Ooh! Wait, we wanna show you what we got!”**

…

The thing Webber wanted to show them was an enormous pearl. Enormous meaning, this thing was the size of a bowling ball and almost as heavy.  **“We got it from the crabby lady.”**

“Someone lives out there?” Dib asked. Seriously, how many people were there?

“She’s not like us,” Walter said. “But yeah, she’s an actual talking crab.”

“Snip, snip,” Wormwood added, opening and closing his fingers (?), to accentuate the point.

Dib wanted to know what differentiated Wormwood and Webber from a talking crab but wasn’t sure how to ask it without being rude.

Webber took back the pearl and carefully placed it in his backpack.  **“It was raining, so I let her have my umbrella because Wormwood already shared his with me, and she gave me this and told me her name. It’s Pearl, so this is Pearl’s pearl! Get it?”** He giggled.

At this point, the four of them had almost finished unloading the boat. There were some enormous fish (Webber and Walter killed and cleaned them, while Dib watched. He wasn’t squeamish, but the way they nonchalantly pulled out their organs while they were still flopping was a tad unsettling), barnacles, and seaweed. In addition, they also had salt rock chunks drying in a pan. They left the fishing rods, though.

Walter loaded most of the stuff onto a pack around Woby’s neck, but didn’t mount her this time, instead opting to walk alongside her with everyone else.

**“I like your coat, Dib,”** Webber said.  **“And your shirt is funny. We can’t tell if it’s sad or tired.”**

“Thanks,” Dib said. He really liked Webber. He was the kind of person who you just felt good talking to.

Wormwood, clearly doing his best to follow suit, spoke up. “Very nice head. It’s big, means friend is smart.”

“My head isn’t big!” Dib protested. How come that seemed to be the first thing anyone had to say about him around here was? Even this weird tree monster thing. “How come that’s the first thing everyone says?!”

The tree seemed baffled and looked to Webber and Walter, who were watching with expressions of glee. “Joke?”

Walter winked at Webber and slung an arm around Dib’s shoulder. “Yep! He’s so happy you noticed how smart he is!”

**“Yeah! He’s just joking around, because you’re his friend now, and friends like to joke!”** Webber added.

Dib pushed Walter’s arm off his shoulder and glared at him. He couldn’t believe this. Traitors, already ganging up on him with this poor, unassuming, plant man, who Dib couldn’t really be mad at. Wormwood, on the other hand, was very happy and scooped him up in a hug. Dib had been nearly squeezed to death by some of the cables of Zim’s alien computers and robots before. This was slightly less hard, and a whole lot scratchier. “Nice to meet new friends. Glad to make you happy.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dib said, knowing it was too late to change that label.

…

“What is this even supposed to do?!” he asked, wiping the sweat from his face. “You’ve made me find this stupid thing, then lug it halfway across this island, and now you say there’s more?!”

-

“It’s not beyond me! You doubt?!”

-

“Don’t tell me what to do!” He growled, pointing a finger at the fissure with all the intensity of aiming a gun on it. “I do this because I want to! Shut your mouth!”

-

“Yes, I know that! It’s a stupid human expression!” He took a bite of the horrid food he had obtained from those dirty little plant creatures. It was cold and slimy and resembled meat, though he had been assured that appearance was the only thing it had in common with the substance. He needed it, though. His PAK was malfunctioning, and had stopped its automatic digestion cycle. Without proper tools and a safe environment, even he couldn’t repair it.

“When I finish with this, it better be as good as you say.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ovcharka are beautiful and I want one, but they could also crush me.


End file.
